There's an article from the Fairfax Chief dated 1958 detailing the whirlwind adventures of three Osage citizens on their way to Europe for the World's Fair in Brussels.
"Chief Paul Pitts and his son Robert Pitts along with Lillie Morrell Burkhart, Princess Paw-hu-ska made their way from Tulsa, Oklahoma to New York City and then Frankfort, Germany via a Pan Am flight and then onto the World's Fair in Brussels," read the article.
Lillie went on to give a lecture at the German Indian Club, television interviews and then went on to represent the Osage Nation and Oklahoma in a world's fair set amidst the cold war whose theme was the atomic age. On their return trip they traveled on the Queen Elizabeth Ocean Liner back to New York City from their world tour.
This wasn't Lillie's first trip outside the United States. Her name can also be found on passenger lists of ocean liners traveling to Egypt, Ireland and the UK in the mid-1930's. She made her first trip to Europe in 1931 and visited Hawaii in 1934.
Travel outside the United States was difficult and mostly reserved for those who could afford to do so. Lillie could afford these trips.
She was a wealthy Osage woman living within the Osage Reservation, had land and two headrights. She was educated and eventually settled in a pink country house outside of Fairfax called the Arrowhead Ranch.
Her trip to Brussels was less than 20 years after William Hale would be convicted of a grand conspiracy to murder and defraud Osages of their wealth and property – including Henry Roan, Mollie Burkhart and her sisters and mother Lizzie Q.
Lillie traveled overseas after Indigenous children were sent to boarding schools across the country in an attempt to rid them of their traditions and language. She spoke Osage and was a translator for the Osage Nation at a time when the United States government was trying to dismantle tribal governments and dissolve them
Despite these disastrous policies, and despite witnessing her friends and fellow Osage citizens be preyed upon for their property and wealth, she survived. She helped to preserve the culture and language. It's a legacy that still lives on today at the White Hair Memorial, her former home between Hominy and Ralston in Osage County.
Billie Ponca, Lillie's great-niece spent a lot of time with her during the last year of her life before she passed away in 1967. She remembers her aunt Lillie's home smelling of gardenia perfume and being full of lavish furnishings she had shipped back from Europe.
"If you can visualize this, there were velvet curtains on the windows…marble table tops with I think it was cherry wood for the legs, rugs from Europe," Ponca said.
Ponca is an Osage elder who lives in Fairfax, the community where she grew up in Osage County in Oklahoma. Her house is also immaculate and has a sign on the porch that reads, "What happens on Billie's Porch, Stays on Billie's Porch." She also worked at the White Hair Memorial after it was acquired by the Oklahoma Historical Society.
One of the things Lillie imparted to her niece: be proud to be Osage. She remembered a time when she got a call from her aunt, asking her to come out to the house. Lillie had a present for her.
"She pulled out this suitcase and she said ‘I want you to have this,’' Ponca recalled. She opened it and inside were regalia and clothing she would need to dance during the In-Lon-Schka, Osage ceremonial dances that happen every summer.
"It was a broadcloth skirt that came from her dad's blanket, there was earrings…everything except moccasins and shirt because she didn't have my size."
Lillie pulled out a tape recorder and, "she showed me how she wanted me to wear a shawl and she showed me how she wanted me to dance on that song. So I've never forgotten that, you know?"
In today's media landscape, erasing harmful stereotypes that have plagued Indigenous people for decades was something Ponca said her aunt wanted to do during her time-she was a trailblazer, she said. She wanted people to know what real Native people were like-especially during a time when westerns and television shows didn't even cast Native people for those roles.
"You'd hear something about dirty, greasy Indians-they portray them as not being cultured, not having religion, not having a sense of value and those types of Hollywood stereotypes. And I think maybe that was important to her when she went around the world and represented herself as an Osage woman,” Ponca said.
Lillie was born in 1907 right after the mineral estate was created in 1906. Not only did she have wealth from her own headright, she inherited other headrights-or shares in Osage oil wealth. Lillie's Osage name is Wahsha Metsahe.
Her dad was Hlu-Ah-Wah-Tah Morrell and was born in Kansas in 1863, on the tribe's reservation there. Her mother He-To-Oppe Morrell was born in Indian Territory in 1873, right after the Osage were removed from their Kansas reservation to what would become their final home. They're buried nearby in the Morell family cemetery and she had four sisters and brothers-one of whom died when they were just a baby.
She attended the Osage Boarding School in Pawhuska and the Catholic College of Oklahoma in Guthrie. She was fluent in Osage and was a full blood citizen.
Lillie lived through a time of tremendous change for the Osage Nation – one in which it argued and won the right to keep the mineral estate under tribal control with the Osage Allotment Act that passed in 1906. Just seven years before her birth, the Department of the Interior dissolved their tribal government.
She was the first Native American admitted to the Daughters of the American Revolution, helped fund the first Osage Baptist Church in Fairfax, and was a pillar in the community.
Tara Damron, who is now the director of the White Hair Memorial Osage Resource and Learning Center said Lillie's former home has a special place in her heart.
"I started taking language classes, Osage language classes out here at White Hair, and that's how I came to this place," Damron said.
Damron also has other connections to this place-her family has land nearby and her dad's family helped put out a fire that happened at Lillie's house after she passed away.
The White Hair Memorial is now under the trusteeship of the Oklahoma Historical Society-where Damron has worked for 20 years. She became the director in 2019.
The White Hair Memorial is tucked back off of state highway 20 going into Fairfax. The turn off onto the gravel road taking you to the house is surrounded by lush bluestem prairie, pastures, cattle, deer and other wild animals.
The historical marker telling you where it is, is small and in nondescript blue and white. If you're not going slow enough, you may miss it.
Inside there are vaulted ceilings, bedrooms that once had four poster beds, luxurious furnishings and ornate light fixtures. On the wall are pictures of Lillie, professional portraits taken in the 1920's with Lillie sporting a fashionable wavy bob along with one of her with a folding chair headed to the In-Lon-Schka dances.
A lot of the furniture in her house came from Europe, Damron said. If she liked something she saw on her travels, she just ordered it and it would be shipped off the train to Fairfax.
"She was independent…she was a freethinker. She was someone who lived life on her own terms," Damron said about Lillie.
Lillie was the descendent of Chief White Hair-a person who played a significant role in early Osage history in the late 18th Century. Lillie was named chief of that clan because of her connection. There's a proclamation on the wall of her house telling visitors about her connection and her being given the title.
Dan Swan, the first site director at the White Hair Memorial also remembers reading about her and talking to members of the Osage community who knew her.
Her generosity was something that stood out.
"There's this great story about her where she would call a cab," Swan said.
"The cab would go to the grocery store and the employees of the grocery store in Fairfax would run out and they'd load the trunk with groceries," he said this cab would then roll up to someone's house who was having troubles or experienced a death in the family.
"That was like one of her signature moves."
She also provided support for the annual In-Lon-Schka dances-a tradition that continues today. Lillie has a song in all three Osage districts, Fairfax, Hominy and Pawhuska and the White Hair makes a pledge of groceries to the drumkeepers families in all those districts.
Leaving her home to the Oklahoma Historical Society was what Lillie wanted. In her will dated April 5th of 1966 she said specifically, "I hereby give my home to the Oklahoma Historical Society to be kept as a shrine to Chief White Hair, as I am the last living member of the White Hair Clan, together with the headrights and balance of my land to be used for the upkeep of the shrine."
Lillie's will was subject to a lengthy probate process that is all too familiar in Osage county, where at one time, the place was called a "lawyers paradise" because of the work that wealthy Osage estates like Lillie's would bring.
Her nieces and nephews were angry about the prospect of having Osage wealth and land leave Osage hands once again. It wasn't settled until 1983.
"She wanted her house to be a museum," her niece Billie Ponca said. "Not like what it is today."
Ponca, Damron and Swan all agree that having her house open to the public and open to Osages is what she wanted.
Today, out of the 2,229 thousand Osage headrights, nearly a quarter are out of Osage hands. The Oklahoma Historical Society is one of them, along with the University of Oklahoma, various trusts, Catholic Churches, and a defunct care home called the Hissom Memorial Center, which was closed in the late 1990s after allegations of abuse.
The fact that White Hair Memorial is on that list complicates Damron’s job. She wants to live up to Lillie's wishes-keep this home open, keep it as a learning center.
Today, the White Hair Memorial is home to the Burns Osage Library, from Louis F. Burns and Ruth B. Burns' collection of books and materials on Indian law, culture and genealogy. It also contains materials from the National Archives and a number of Osage material culture items like ribbon work, finger weaving and an Osage wedding coat.
She says the house isn't being utilized to its full potential. It's off the beaten path and so few people know about it or Lillie. She thinks there could be more done to maintain it-something that is the responsibility of the trustees who manage this place and manage Lillie's headright.
Damron wants the house to be more visible.
In an email to KOSU, Trait Thompson, the current director of Oklahoma Historical Society says he recognizes some of the challenges.
"I'm hoping that with the movie coming out, it is going to shine a light on this place and on and on the OHS," Damron said.
